


This Is The Thing That Is

by reconditarmonia



Category: Cinderella (Fairy Tale), Fairy Tales & Related Fandoms, Original Work
Genre: Multi, Selkies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-13
Updated: 2019-07-13
Packaged: 2020-06-03 18:18:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,375
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19469494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/reconditarmonia/pseuds/reconditarmonia
Summary: The godmother tells her story.





	This Is The Thing That Is

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Missy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Missy/gifts).



> Thanks Morbane for beta!

I have given you many gifts already, my dear, but I fancy that now that you have everything your heart desires, you won’t mind it too much if I think a story a better first wedding anniversary gift than jewels or gold. 

If it were true that shedding seven tears into the sea, or seven times seven, or seven times that to the seventh degree, would call your selkie to you, then I would have been with you night and day since that fateful marriage, as different to these present joys as night is to day. It isn’t right to speak ill of the dead, but I cannot speak well of a man who would do what he did to you, and live unashamed under the same roof. What a household that must have been to live in! A lady of the house who refused to lift a finger to do any work, a daughter all but forced to become a serving-girl first by her own father — before the grass had even grown green on her poor mother’s grave — and then, as the years passed and he himself lay in his grave, by the mere necessity of keeping the house from falling apart. And of course the two little girls, born and raised to see that house as their domain. Who, growing into a woman in a home so lacking in love, would not think of the royal ball as a shining star? Not the excitement, or the wealth, despite the drudgery of a servant’s life — not even the freedom, despite a stepmother who could not abide any of her daughters so much as going down to the seashore unless she snuck away — but a great celebration devoted to the cause of love. Even I could not but find that hope contagious — that in a ballroom, my dearest goddaughter might find a love as true and lasting as that between myself and the companion of my heart, so tragically taken from us. You mustn’t think I even had to consider the matter before agreeing to help. It’s no shabby thing, to be daughter to a family friend of the seal folk!

I dove to the wreck of a pleasure-boat, shallow enough and near enough to shore that on a day when the sea was calm and clear, someone looking out the upper windows of one of those houses on the hill might — I fancied, of course, never having been in one myself — see its outline in the water, among the rocks. (You must tell me if this is true, if you have ever seen it from your window, or if all those windows were always kept closed to the sea breezes and the sounds of gulls, and shuttered to the reflection of the sun off the waves.) I remembered this, and perhaps you do too; the music and the festival atmosphere had gone to the heads of the crew as well as the passengers, and the sailors had indulged in the wine meant for lords and ladies to toast the coming and the going of another Midsummer. Silly things. Everyone had escaped alive, abandoning the finery that might weigh them down and the Midsummer gifts they had yet to exchange as the boat filled with water.

Half-buried in the soft sand gleamed something gold, and a little digging with my snout turned up a fine chain, hung with emeralds and sapphires. With a few tries, I was able to poke my head through and wear it around my neck. Between my jaws I seized, by one handle, a chest whose delicate inlay of hearts and flowers told me it must be a lady’s; what kind of godmother would I be if I let my goddaughter go to Court in a doublet and breeches? Fashions change quicker on land than they do in the sea, but not that quickly, and I could only imagine the faces of all those lords and ladies.

I suppose my eyes aren’t what they used to be, because I hadn’t even noticed that little golden key stuck right through two links of the chain, neither with my seal eyes nor once I had shed my skin after bringing my treasures to the shore. Clever goddaughter, to spot that! It must be a good luck charm, I believe I said, a gift from the sea to be sure to unlock the Prince’s heart at the ball. 

Instead of a tiara — speaking of how quickly fashions change on land! You must understand, I couldn’t have known to look for one — I wove an intricate braid, three tresses upon three. I’d combed out and braided your hair like this dozens of times before, and sung you old songs of forbidden love affairs between whales and squids, or ghostly seals still on the hunt. Do you remember how you used to love those songs? I had no shoes to provide — it wasn’t that I’d forgotten, although I never need them myself, but one can only do so much, and the pink dress, you’ll remember, was long enough that no one would be the wiser. And then, what else was left but to send my darling goddaughter to the ball?

I must tell you, no matter how much you praise the palace, its musicians, or its marvelous rose gardens to me, I will always maintain that we have better here in the sea. I speak not from sentimentality or partiality, but from objective truth, whatever you may say to the contrary. How could you forget about the never-ending variety of our living gardens of coral and anemone, filled with fish of every color, or convince yourself that mere fireworks could be superior to the displays of glowing jellyfish and tiny creatures in the depths of the ocean, the squeaking of a mess of guts and wind to the songs of whales? I can imagine you walking through their gardens, admired in your silk and satin and gold, but I cannot imagine you truly preferring theirs to ours if you consider the question properly in your soul. A little time is all.

If the Prince indeed looked at no one else all night, and took other dance partners only when politeness and duty compelled him, then it certainly made me wonder that he did not propose marriage right away. Perhaps I had been wrong to seek out what I thought the fashionable lady of the hour was wearing; perhaps, instead, the King and Queen found the ensemble common, and wanted their son to make a match with a girl that they could feel sure had family connections. If they had only known your family's pedigree in our world! I resolved to bring jewels for the next night that would show well as family heirlooms. 

This time, I swam further out, where the shallow sea shelf fell away and the curve of the land no longer held off the force of the waves and wind. It was raining, but I didn't feel it as I dove down to a deeper wreck from years and years ago, where a ship, bearing a princess towards a state visit honoring two hundred years of peace and friendship between the two kingdoms, had caught a freak gust of wind and capsized in a storm. Only four people had made it to the shore, half-drowned: three sailors, cast unconscious onto the beach, and the princess’s maid, clinging to a wooden spar. 

I swam through the ship, peering through the darkened water. Here I passed through parts where the outer timbers had decayed or floated away and only the ribs, like a whale’s skeleton, remained; there I passed through rooms filled with water and turned on their sides with all their contents in disarray, overgrown with barnacles. If anyone would be coming in nowadays to chart a course, to gamble at dice or dance to the sound of a fiddle or pipe, to practice a speech for the ceremonies, it would be a fish or an eel. Again a faint gleam of light told me that I’d found what I was looking for: the princess’s quarters, where a mirror still hung at one corner from a wall that was now a floor. Strong as I am even in my old age, I knew that I couldn’t hope to carry the great chest here to the surface, so I nudged it open to look inside. Salt-stained silk and velvet from where the sides and lid had leaked over the decades; a necklace of two thick, intricately worked loops of silver, one short and one long, studded with carved rubies and drops of pearl; a tiara of thin, fine gold scrolls and leaves. This would have been perfect for the previous night, but it was too late now; the necklace, though, was ideal. I lifted it from the chest, wearing it around my neck, and continued my search.

In another room, I found a matching tiara, with heavy silverwork, rubies, and pearls, in a corner in a heap of tattered cloth. I managed to wear it on my head, and enjoyed a moment of imagining myself Queen of the Seals, danced attendance upon by fish of all sizes and shapes, frolicking in circles alone in the ship as though I were much younger. The gentle currents of my movement made the pile of cloth float like seaweed, dislodging a jumble of bones, and I realized why it was that I had found the tiara here. Like we do, the princess had passed between worlds; now she was a part of our world forever, unable to pass back.

After the triumph of the previous night, the key, you understand, seemed quite unnecessary to win the Prince himself, lucky charm or no — and, tiny and gold, it hardly matched the ornate silver of the tiara or the necklace. But how could I keep from indulging my favorite goddaughter, even after professing my certainty that it was not any magic in the key that had charmed him so? What a sad shame, this lack of confidence in such a beautiful and amiable girl! (No, you mustn't contradict me, a godmother knows best.) My hands, in my human form, are wrinkled, and move a trifle stiffly, so to pry down one of the metal teeth holding a large ruby in place on the necklace, and pass it through a loop of the key before bending it back, wasn’t easy. But when I was finished, it seemed respectable enough, I thought, for those crowds amid the glitter of lights and the scent of roses under the moon.

Do you suppose the Prince knew that he was dancing with the same woman as the night before, or did he fall in love all over again? I cannot help smiling when I think of that feeling; I imagine him jealous of each minute, chastened for his rudeness to his other guests the night before (if, as you told me, he paid a proper amount of attention to all the ladies present at the second ball), looking over his partner’s shoulder to find his mysterious princess and discover something new about her in the dart of her eyes to one object or another, or in the tilt of her head as the musicians struck up a new piece. You must tell me if I imagine rightly, if all eyes were drawn this time to the same place as the Prince’s must have been. Ah, to fall in love all over again!

And yet the Prince still did not propose! Evidently he has no godmother to look after him and teach him how to make the right decisions. I felt, you see, a sense that I had failed, and the feeling of having let down someone that one loves, my dear, is a quietly devastating thing. It is one that I wanted, as much as was in my power, to stop feeling; one that in this case, perhaps, it was indeed in my power to stop feeling.

I did not sleep that night. I hunted my supper carefully and listened for the rumors of where others had hunted, collecting fish scales of gray-blue and royal blue and yellow, shining silver and white, that fell slowly through the water like so much snow. From the sand I dug up long-disused shells that spiraled into spears or crowns or that spread out like ladies’ fans in rose and white or iridescent violet and green. And I took the bones from where coral had died, raw and white and branching. I sat on the shore as the night turned to dawn and the dawn to day, stitching the scales into a glittering cape, stringing the shells into necklaces and bracelets, shaping the coral into a crown. It isn’t our way, of course, to dress ourselves in bones, but it was what I fancied the humans might imagine seal royalty to look like, and nothing but royalty would do for this final chance.

When the sun began to sink into the waves, and I began hearing the echo of carriages rattling and crowds chattering along the sea road towards the palace once more, only one thing was left. I washed my raw and bleeding hands in the water already red with the sunset, and then, stretching less the thing itself than the power of change it held, worked my own sealskin into an elegant gown. Yes, my own — you must have known what it was the moment you saw it, but perhaps not that it was mine. You can understand why I so dwelt on the necessity of leaving the ball with enough time to bring it back to me! I was able to swim out to a rock and sleep unguarded for a few hours, wrapped in my long gray hair, but this body was so slow and clumsy for swimming that I think I cannot blame you for not wanting to try to swim in such a body.

I dreamed, and perhaps you can tell me how much I dreamed true, of a maze of roses; a long line of couples, young and old, danced through its paths, skipping or in stately procession, singing full-voiced for their accompaniment, laughing at the game as one by one each couple turned a wrong corner, found a dead end, and had to return to the ballroom. Only two dancers reached the center of the maze, the chorus of earlier dwindled now to one voice singing high and one low; their song abruptly ended, cut off by a kiss, and then a second. Then a third, before a clock rang out, and the sea princess, inscrutable as the waves and imperious as a storm, transformed stroke by stroke into a startled girl. She ran back the way she had come, but found herself in one dead end after another, the man on her heels — I found myself afraid, even in my sleep, thinking of you in danger from such a man — and finally tore right through the rose hedges, pushing aside thorny branches with her hands. The thorns caught her hair and her jewels, scratched her hands and feet and shredded her shining cape as she dived through. That was where I shook awake.

It must have seemed very rude of me not to wait to hear the story of the night. I wept over those poor little hands and feet, yes, telling the skin to knit and heal, but I would not so carelessly repay such wounds, got in selfless care of me and my need to return to the deep waters, by lingering on shore. And really, those eyes, glowing with happiness despite the scratches and the wild hair, told me all I needed to know. I donned my sealskin and dove in.

Even out in the sea we heard, you know — about how the Prince was searching the city for the girl who owned a lock that fit the golden key, found in the dirt at the foot of a thorny rosebush. All very silly, I thought at the time — I may be old-fashioned, but that’s no way to choose a spouse, and you know as well as I that I'd pulled the key out of the wreck. (Never let it be said an old lady can't be wrong sometimes!) If anyone had thought to consult me, I could have given him or his advisers directions right to your front door and saved them a world of trouble. Some of my younger nieces wanted to search the sea floor to see if the matching lock was here — not a one of them but dreamed she would burn her skin and die a human queen. I trust you'll be a good influence now, dear, and tell them it's not worth it.

Anyway, I hardly need to tell you what happened when he finally knocked on your door, but imagine the scene through the Prince’s eyes — or rather, through the eyes of one of his advisers or footmen, since you say that all it took was one moment of recognition, one meeting of eyes, before the Prince could look at nothing and no one else. Imagine, then, that you are a footman to the Prince, tired and thirsty from going up and down the dusty streets to knock at every house, try the key in every door, and haul chest after chest up and down stairs. The last chest to try, fetched from deep in the house, is bound in rings of iron and covered with a thick layer of dust. You crouch to try the key in the lock, and it turns as easily as the wind changes direction. Perhaps you stop; after so many days of searching, you aren’t actually sure what to do next. The lock has been found, and the Prince’s love is the servant girl with the still-healing red scratches up both arms (you assume it’s not the hard-eyed lady of the house or either of the little girls). As if the way they’re staring at each other didn’t make all this work of yours superfluous. Still, you blow off a little of the dust, and lift the lid to reveal a folded sealskin, sleek and dark. All of a sudden you feel a hard shove and go sprawling to the floor. Scrambling to your feet, you see the Prince clutching his servant girl to him protectively, where the lady of the house has thrown her aside to get to the chest. She lifts it from the chest, stroking it with tears at her eyes; you, the footman, must feel as though you've stumbled into a strange scene, you and the Prince both. Then she dashes from the room, and you hear her open the door and slam it behind her; when you look out the front window, she's already disappeared. The only trace left of her are her shoes, jettisoned one after the other on the road that leads down to the sea.

And now I must bring my story to an end — the story of how I had a hand in rescuing you from that house, without knowing that that was what I was doing, or that the key I called a lucky love-charm was the very one cast into the sea to keep you prisoner. The sun’s last rays are filtering down to us, red into violet and gold into green, and no doubt my nieces are already out on the town, losing no time in making the most of their taste of the land since they know their skins are in safe hands. Your daughters, your stepdaughter, and her husband the Prince will soon be arriving. We will feast a year since we wed, a year and a day since you returned home to me, and then — if indeed I dreamed true — I think I should like to steal a tradition from the land, for, you see, I am not always so set in my ways. We will all, seals, fishes, turtles and whales, proceed in a great dance through the underwater caverns, singing as we go, and I will help you remember how to find the center of the maze.


End file.
